CHIP KELLY

joe table wrote:Lets be real, Ruf isn't anything special at all.

They said that about Len Matuszek once.

ruf has plus plus raw power. thats special. whether he can make enough contact to get to it is another thing.

if you gave him 600 ABs next season and just let him learn through his struggles, is it unrealistic to think he'd go .260/.315/.480?

remember his first home run? he got jammed and still took it out to the lcf alley. http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?conte ... 9&c_id=mlb

Even if he fulfills that (optimistic IMO) offensive scenario, he's Lucas Duda. And I feel like a Fugee if I'm gonna complain about Lucas Duda getting bumped

But like I said it's all relative, gonna be more worked up when Mike Young is ole'ing balls 8 inches to his right as our everyday 3B

Grotewold wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote: My daughter has one of those plastic balls with the different shapes that you have to try to fit through the same-shaped holes in the ball. When she first got it, she couldn't put any of the shapes into the ball. She'd try to push the oval shape through the square hole or the triangular shape through the star-shaped hole, etc. It was sometimes funny to watch and other times frustrating because I wanted her to figure it out. I expect I'll feel something similar this year watching Charlie try to use our collection of corner OFers. The positive sign is that my daughter has figured it out...... I'm wondering if Charlie can learn new tricks.

Well that's completely obnoxious

Needs more commas and run on sentences and obscure references but otherwise not a bad attempt at a Baumanism.

1 wrote:Seating arrangement at the banquet tonight had ruf next to amaro. It was great. They both checked out the newly postpartumnal assistant GM as she walked by. Ruben gave her a little wave. Amaro said we're getting another catcher and that's it. Blackberries were checked.

Hope the catcher is Buster Posey

Trent Steele wrote:Reasonably stated, but I think this is completely different than Pierre, who was basically signed as a 5th OF and worked his way into more AB through a combination of merit/injuries/trades. I think they are going to give him a crack at the everyday job and that he was signed for that purpose. If he's .220 terrible, I agree he'll be cut. But that's unlikely to happen. He'll hit .270, walk in in 3% of his PA, hit an occasional HR with respectable RBI numbers, and destroy this team in non-traditional ways for several months. He'll be brutal on defense, ground into a ton of double plays, not get on base, hit for middling power, and just generally continue to suck.

There's no "high-reward" here. It's all risk to me. Focusing on the money is the wrong way to look at it. It's the opportunity cost of not ACTUALLY improving your team.

This is well stated.

I personally wanted to give Ruf and D Brown a full half-season to find their way. I don't see how either of them will be worse than known out-makers? Ruf could be Roger Freed, but I doubt it. Brown could linger hitting .233 OPS .600 but let's find out once and for all.

But forgetting the Baseball side of this move, which is seriously questionable at any price -- why bring this kind of ignoramus to the clubhouse? Why?

On paper, we're so far below the Nats it really doesn't matter. Our only hope is the same thing we've all known since Hamels got extended:

Doc, Cole and Cliff have to have healthy lights-out seasons, and Utley and Howard have to approximate their better seasons and play enough games. Papelbon has to be no worse than last year and we need an 8th inning guy. That's enough to make a run, hope to get lucky and that the rest of these out-makers and no-power CFer can all have a few streaks (not at the same time) and "luck out".

I'd rather play promising youngsters, than retreads, over-the-hillers.

It's not Delmon Young in isolation. The greater concern is the pattern here. Look, if the Phils had their 2009 starting OF, bringing in Delmon Young on a $750K contract as a backup OF and PH wouldn't be a bad move. But Rube seems to have a fetish for the least patient hitters in baseball. Time after time he goes after what PtK just called "known out makers." The result, as we've seen, is not only subpar production, but short innings, allowing opposing starters to go deeper into the game so we don't get into the opposition's middle relievers.

Not every guy in the lineup is going to be a patient OBP machine. But if you consistently fill your lineup with known out makers (I love that phrase), you're going to end up with a team that makes a ton of outs.

Well, I like that he's 27. I also kinda like that he said he was going to play RF (rather than LF) since I would rather he not take ABs from Ruf. I figure Brown ends up platooning both Ruf in LF and Delmon in RF. The guy who looks pushed out is Mayberry. But I definitely agree that Amaro's blindness on OBP is really really unsettling.

SQUIRE

JFLNYC wrote:It's not Delmon Young in isolation. The greater concern is the pattern here. Look, if the Phils had their 2009 starting OF, bringing in Delmon Young on a $750K contract as a backup OF and PH wouldn't be a bad move. But Rube seems to have a fetish for the least patient hitters in baseball. Time after time he goes after what PtK just called "known out makers." The result, as we've seen, is not only subpar production, but short innings, allowing opposing starters to go deeper into the game so we don't get into the opposition's middle relievers.

Not every guy in the lineup is going to be a patient OBP machine. But if you consistently fill your lineup with known out makers (I love that phrase), you're going to end up with a team that makes a ton of outs.

At this point, I think it's clear he values "contact" hitters more than especially patient hitters, yeah. Which is a concern.

But the counter is, which high-OBP guys should he have filled the roster out with? The market for them seems pretty dry. And at lot of people here wanted Upton, "known out maker" extraordinaire, for big big money.

My greater concern is de-emphasizing defense. Although they'll still be really strong up the middle

Monkeyboy wrote:I think he sometimes will stick with guys a bit too long, but that's part of the reason players like him.

I think this is actually being overblown. The most-cited example is going with Ibanez over Mayberry in 2011 NLDS, but Ibanez hit a big home run in Game 1 and just missed a series-winner in Game 5. And we're talking about John Mayberry.

You could argue he's given Brown short shrift, but on the other hand Brown has had several opportunities to steal a job and hasn't really come close. Hopefully it'll click this time.

Charlie worked Werth into the lineup really nicely in 2008 and flipped him and Victorino in the lineup quite often. He also squeezed a productive season out of Burrell, who fell off a cliff (full-time player wise) right after.

He's no Bochy or LaRussa in terms of strategy, but I don't know that there's a major problem there when you factor in the positive effects of being a players' manager.

the thing that really irks me is Young has only had ONE SEASON with appreciable power. Other than that he's been mediocre.

Grotewold wrote:But the counter is, which high-OBP guys should he have filled the roster out with? The market for them seems pretty dry. And at lot of people here wanted Upton, "known out maker" extraordinaire, for big big money.

because he plays a good centerfield and can run the bases without looking like he's wading through dogshit on a cold morning, which means fewer double plays. his career low walk rate is 7.1%. Delmon Young's career high is 5.6%. Young's career high in homers is 21, which Upton has eclipsed three times. This is weak as hell.

Barry Jive wrote:

Grotewold wrote:But the counter is, which high-OBP guys should he have filled the roster out with? The market for them seems pretty dry. And at lot of people here wanted Upton, "known out maker" extraordinaire, for big big money.

because he plays a good centerfield and can run the bases without looking like he's wading through dogshit on a cold morning, which means fewer double plays. his career low walk rate is 7.1%. Delmon Young's career high is 5.6%. Young's career high in homers is 21, which Upton has eclipsed three times. This is weak as hell.

I wasn't really comparing Upton to Young, but yeah I wanted Upton and see the positives there.

I wonder how much Bourn's going to get. Would have rather overpaid his ass to play a corner spot.

Yeah. You have to figure he'll get no more than 3 years now and may even want only a 1-year deal.

The only positive about this is that it's a one-year deal.

if we signed bourn, we could play with 6 infielders and have delmon just stand behind 2nd base as his defensive position, allowing rollins to play closer to the road cone at 3b. revere and bourn can cover the entire outfield

Plus, Bourn still costs you the 1st round draft pick.

The worst part of all of this is that it's somehow made John Mayberry look like a more attractive option. Heading into the off-season I wouldn't have thought that was possible